‘ So many different types of strange ‘: how Nnedi Okorafor is changing the face of sci-fi

With a Marvel comic under her region and a novel being adapted for TV by HBO, the Nigerian-American scribe is flying the flag for pitch-black, female geeks

As the science fiction novelist Nnedi Okorafor takes to the stage at the TEDGlobal conference in Tanzania, she challenges stereotypes before she has said a word. The 43 -year-old writer who won the 2016 Hugo award( the Oscars of the sci-fi world-wide) for best novella doesn’t look like much of a geek. Yes, she wears oversized glasses, but Okorafor’s specs are stylish, royal-blue Cat-Eyes , not wiry aviators. And, crucially, she happens to be a pitch-black woman.

The Nigerian-American’s success has been applauded as a succes by their home communities that have all along applauded her on from the margins. So when she tweeted on 11 August that she was working on her first projection with the comic publisher Marvel, followers were stimulated. (” A Marvel story. Written by a Nigerian female. Set in Lagos. Superhero’s name: NGOZI. What a time to be alive ,” wrote one love on Twitter) And with a fiction, Who Fears Death, to be adapted for TV by HBO( George RR Martin is its manager creator) Okorafor is about to go from the solitary geek reference-point for young African females to everybody’s favourite new sci-fi writer.

Today, though, marginalised black girls and young women with a love for manga, gaming, or robotics, can find one another online. Facebook communities include Black Girl Nerds– which has 126,000 followers- and its outgrowth, Black Girl Geeks, which has more than 38,000 followers on Twitter. Black female geeks are also being celebrated on screen: the cinema Hidden Fleshes– about the African American mathematicians who played a vital role in the space race- was one of the biggest movies at the box office in 2016.

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